Firoozeh Dumas: Media Portrayal of Muslims 'Very Narrow'<br />Grace Cathedral - Grace Cathedral<br />Often lost in the rhetoric of debate about the United States' immigration policy is this: although each immigrant's country of origin and reason for leaving are widely diverse, the experience of being an immigrant in the United States crosses all cultural divides.<br />For the past five years, Firoozeh Dumas has traveled the country reminding us that our commonalities far outweigh our differences ... and doing so with humor.<br />In 2001, with no prior writing experience, Firoozeh Dumas decided to write down her family stories as a gift for her two children. Those stories became the book Funny in Farsi, a San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times bestseller and a finalist for the PEN/USA award and for an Audie Award for best audio book (She lost to Bob Dylan).<br />She was also a finalist for the prestigious Thurber Prize for American Humor (she lost to Jon Stewart), and is the first Middle Eastern woman ever to be considered for this honor.<br />Dumas's latest book, entitled Laughing Without an Accent, was published in May 2008 - Grace Cathedral
